Suicide attacks and assaults by the al Qaeda-backed Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant are becoming all too common in Syria. The Al Nusrah Front has claimed credit for yet another attack, this time against a Syrian military outpost in the city of Al Qusayr in Homs province.

The Al Nusrah Front has by far taken the lead among the jihadist groups in executing suicide and other complex attacks against the Syrian military. The terror group has now claimed credit for 42 of the 51 suicide attacks that have taken place in Syria in the past 12 months.

The US government is contemplating adding the Al Nusrah Front to the list of global terrorist groups, but some observers in Washington fear that designation would harm the overall insurgency.

Remember who to blame for arming them and hindering assad when they release that shit in the usa..

yep hillary and obama ben la la

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 29089036

Hiltery, wasn't she sitting in the White House Presidential Bedroom laughing her ass off watching the Televised military attack on Waco Dravidians and burning down that compound and the killing of 2 and 3 year old terrorists? That Hillary?

The United States will declare the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist group battling to overthrow Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, a "foreign terrorist organisation", documents showed Tuesday.

The State Department has not formally announced the move to blacklist the group, but posted the declaration in the Federal Register, in a document that described the al-Nusra Front as an alias of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The al-Nusra Front is one of the most effective of several armed groups fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

The group has claimed responsibility for recent suicide bombings that killed scores of people, and has said it hopes to replace the Assad family's four-decade-old dictatorship with a strict Islamic state.

The State Department linked the group to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has carried out scores of massive bombings targeting Shia civilians and regularly targeted US forces before their withdrawal a year ago.

"We've had concerns that al-Nusra is little more than a front for Al-Qaeda in Iraq, [which] has moved some of its operations into Syria," Victoria Nuland, a spokesperson for the US State Department, said earlier on Monday.

She said the State Department would "have more to say about this" in the coming days.

Declaring the al-Nusra Front a terrorist group would entail freezing its assets and banning Americans from any transactions with the group, which could complicate efforts to provide aid to Syria's fragmented rebellion.

Earlier on Monday, jihadists led by the al-Nusra Front seized a strategic army base in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo.

An AFP correspondent reporting from the scene said many of the fighters hailed from other Arab countries and Central Asia. The move to declare the al-Nusra Front a terror group comes ahead of the so-called Friends of Syria meeting set to take place in Morocco on Wednesday.

Virtually everyone agrees that a decision by Assad to use chemical weapons against rebels or civilians – or a failure to maintain Syrian government control over those weapons – would produce frightening outcomes. But what, precisely, would the U.S. Government’s justification be for using force in Syria to prevent these outcomes? Somewhat ironically, the U.S. may have a stronger legal case to act if Syria transfers (or loses control of) its chemical weapons stock than if Syria uses them against individuals within Syria.

Let’s start with the case for using force in the event that Syria either loses control of its weapons or transfers them to a group such as Hezbollah. The Bush Administration famously – and controversially – asserted in its 2002 National Security Strategy that it reserved the right to use force pre-emptively, particularly where terrorists were attempting to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. The Obama Administration’s 2010 National Security Strategy took a lower-key approach to use-of-force issues, avoiding any discussion of anticipatory self-defense. Nevertheless, the U.S. Government long has asserted that the UN Charter allows states to use defensive force in advance of an actual armed attack, as long as the threat is “imminent” and force is necessary.

As we know from John Brennan’s Harvard Law School speech, the United States thinks states should broaden their definition of “imminence” to reflect the contemporary capacities and techniques of terrorist organizations. If Hezbollah obtained a stock of chemical weapons, the United States almost certainly would treat that as an imminent threat, given that Hezbollah previously has conducted attacks against the United States (most recently in the person of Ali Mussa Daqduq).

The Obama administration Tuesday appeared to temper its recent assertions that the Syrian government may be preparing to use chemical weapons, with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta telling reporters the relevant intelligence had "really kind of leveled off."

"We haven't seen anything new indicating any aggressive steps to move forward in that way," Panetta told reporters during a flight to Kuwait, adding that U.S. officials "continue to monitor it very closely and we continue to make clear to them that they should not under any means make use of these chemical weapons against their own population. That would produce serious consequences."

There is also a growing belief among the Western backers of the opposition that intervention in some form is necessary now to influence the future political shape of Syria. Jihadist groups among the rebels, some like Jabhat al-Nusra linked to al-Qa’ida, have steadily gained in power and influence because of their access to weapons and money coming from the Gulf states putting more secular groups at a severe disadvantage.

The Obama administration is considering proscribing Al-Nusra as a terrorist organisation, making it illegal for American citizens to fund it and sending a warning message to Arab states not to back it. At the same time Western help will be directed at and strengthen the moderate groups. The unified rebel command structure set up in Turkey, at the behest of the US and UK, has excluded the Islamist militias.

The head of National Police counter-terrorist intelligence, Commissioner-General Enrique Baron, told a strategic security conference in Barcelona that it was believed that the self-styled Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb - AQMI - could have acquired such arms in Libya or elsewhere during the Arab Spring last year. He also warned that the group was encouraging attacks against Spain.

The US and its allies have hired contractors to train some Syrian rebel brigades in chemical weapons security, Syria Deeply has exclusively learned from four diplomats, including one US official. The sources asked to remain anonymous, as they deal directly with developments in Syria. The training would mark a higher level of coordination between the US and armed opposition forces, working to secure Syria’s chemical arsenal during a period of political turmoil.

According to one of the diplomats, an Arab official, there are 24-hour Skype links connecting the US with rebel brigades, to enhance monitoring of chemical weapons sites on the ground. He also said there are training operations in effect in Jordan, where the US Defense Department has placed roughly 150 Army special operations soldiers to work with Jordanian troops on chemical and biological weapons security.

According to the IISS report, the greatest danger for Syria’s chemical weapons is that non-state actors like Al Qaeda or Hezbollah could gain access to dangerous materials, posing a threat to Israel and the region at large. Islamist rebel groups have been at the forefront of battle and some are believed to have links with Al Qaeda.